


When Boredom Strikes

by Tabbyluna



Category: Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series - Jeff Kinney
Genre: Based on a conversation, Crack Treated Seriously, Egg Laying Mention, Fanfiction, Gen, Girl bashing mention, Humor, Last two are just to be safe, Metafiction, POV First Person, Talking About Yaoi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26986762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabbyluna/pseuds/Tabbyluna
Summary: During the Raven Flu epidemic, and the subsequent lockdown because of it, Greg gets into a book series his Mom got for his birthday. He discovered that he liked it. But because he finished the series, he got bored quickly after that. So now he takes a look at what the fan community was like online.
Kudos: 6





	When Boredom Strikes

**Author's Note:**

> Blame my friend for this. She gave me the plot bunny, and I'm bored at home (and also kind of hungry). This is hot off the press with no editing, so be warned.

Tuesday

Today I finished the last book in the Thunder Riders series, and honestly, it was all pretty good. I know Mom only gave it to me for my birthday because she’d been trying to get me to read more, but I kind of regret not getting to it sooner. Maybe it is just the quarantine getting to me and making me extremely bored, but it was legitimately well-written, I liked the characters, and the fantasy concepts were all executed well.

I remember the Thunder Riders series being actually really popular in school, before the Raven Flu forced it to shut down. Specifically, I remember it being really popular among a lot of girls my grade. Fans of the books used to congregate together at the same table during lunch, and there they would hold fan meetings. I think one of them actually got her copies signed by the author of those books, Eliza Sparrow, and that was a big deal among the group for a while. It kind of sucks that they most likely aren’t meeting up in person anymore. I would actually like to talk to some fans about the books now, and I don’t know where to begin.

I tried going online to search for where all the fans were chatting. Because I expected to find some forums or Chaos servers filled with fans. Instead, I ended up finding a lot of art and writing about the main character, Xander, and his main rival, Jeremiah. Or as a lot of fans liked to call them together, ‘Xandemiah’. 

I swear, I will never unsee some of the things I read today. Quarantine had given people some active imaginations.

But honestly, the thing I’m most confused by is why Xander is always paired up with Jeremiah, of all people. I did some digging to try and find out, and a ton of people were complaining about how Xander didn’t really have much chemistry with his lover interest, Krista, and that was why they all preferred to pair him up with Jeremiah. And I get reading the books and coming away thinking that Xander and Krista did not have much chemistry. Honestly, Krista was kind of flat as a character. But to pair Xander up with Jeremiah was what confused me. They hated each other for a good chunk of the story. And by the end of it, even though they ended up teaming up, it was more of a team-up of convenience more than anything. Because they both wanted something that would have been harder to attain without the other. They simply had no chemistry as lovers, and I’m not really sure why all those people thought that Jeremiah would be a step up from Krista.

Now, if it were up to me, Xander would have ended up with his best friend, Damien. They had the best chemistry in the books, and they were probably the only two characters who would have worked as a functioning couple in real life. In the books, he ended up getting together with a new character introduced in the last installment, but his love interest was kind of forced in at the last minute. So I didn’t really get to see the chemistry between them either. All that ended up proving to me was that Xander and Damien still had the best chemistry in the books.

Some people were kind of talking about it in a forum, but the conversation ended up getting really heated really quickly. There were a lot of accusations thrown at both parties, and I ended up having to click out because I couldn’t take anymore yelling after the first three pages.

Though, someone actually linked to one of their Damien/Xander stories in that forum. So I checked it out, and honestly, it was pretty well-written. It was about Damien confessing his feelings to Xander, and Xander saying that he reciprocated. Short, but sweet, even if it was a little simple. From their story though, I found out that the fanfiction website they posted it on had an actual tag for the pairing.

Unfortunately, there were only three other stories on it.

For comparison, I checked the tag for Jeremiah/Xander, and they had over two-thousand stories on it. With over a hundred of them being written during the Raven Flu quarantine.

But since I had nothing better to do, I checked out the other two stories. The second story involved the two of them going on a date. It was written by the same author of the first story, and they said in the notes that it was actually their first story. I could tell. The grammar was a little worse than their most recent story, and while the first one I read was short, that one was somehow even shorter. Regardless, I could tell that the author was pretty passionate about the couple, and put in some effort into what they had written.

And then all that was left was the third one.

You know how I said a lot of people were probably bored out of their minds? Well, I think the third story I read probably exemplified that fact the best.

From the first word, it was pure weirdness. The two of them got abducted by aliens, and were forced to do some sort of weird mating ritual together. Then when the aliens returned them to Earth, they fell asleep in some abandoned barn, and when they woke up Xander discovered that Damien was laying eggs.

One of the aliens possessed a nearby chicken to help out the two of them, giving Xander instructions on how to help Damien through his ‘labour’. And when he finished laying all those eggs, the alien explained that they were chosen as test subjects on alternative means of human reproduction, and that all the eggs Damien laid were their kids. As soon as he said that, they all started hatching into fully formed human babies.

This went on for a couple of chapters. Detailing all the antics Xander and Damien got up to while trying to raise their kids. They slowly fell in love, and in the last chapter, they ended up married, with an alien possessing the body of a cat officiating the ceremony. And for some reason, they wrote Krista in as a vindictive vengeance-seeking vampire. Even though in the books she was a human, and kind of well-known for being blessed with a pure heart by the gods underneath her ‘tough girl’ facade. There wasn’t even a real reason for her to be included, she just showed up to be a jerk, then the aliens kidnapped her to humiliate her by tossing her into a giant pot of cold fondue in front of her friends.

All in all, it was sheer nonsense. And I’m kind of upset that it was the longest story out of the three of these. I’m also a little disappointed that of all things, Damien/Xander got overshadowed by Jeremiah/Xander. But I’m not usually super big into talking about relationships between fictional characters, so I guess that’s just how things are in the Thunder Riders fan community.

**Author's Note:**

> Tbh if the series was a real thing I would probably end up shipping Krista with Damien's love interest, because I'm spitefully determined to develop flat characters. And also because I like yuri.


End file.
